


Flanders Blues

by Konbini



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Bottom Arthur, Discussion of Abortion, Dubious Consent, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Tommy is a bastard, and Arthur's religious guilt, war imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:08:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25844074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Konbini/pseuds/Konbini
Summary: Flanders Blues. That's what they call them. Some - the weak - men get them. The strong men just get stronger, an overabundance of testosterone and violence. Like Tommy. Like John.Arthur tells himself he doesn't have the Flanders Blues.
Relationships: Arthur Shelby/John Shelby, Arthur Shelby/Tommy Shelby
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	Flanders Blues

A man's head split open by a bullet. The grizzled blood, thin and dried into small black puddles where the ash had touched.

Better than the snotty coagulation of a blood sodden limb on a live body. That's too much pain, thinks Arthur.

The image Arthur carries to war of Tommy is clever and bright, mischievous and ever smiling. Arthur thinks about Ada and John and Finn and Aunt Pol - it's just that Tommy is his best friend. The closest in age. They'd missed being Irish twins by about a year. John is still a kid in some ways, but Tommy is Arthur's equal.

When they get their postings it's with some trepidation on Arthur's part. At least if he could have looked out for one of them.

The Catholic guilt doesn't get him until the middle of the war. And it's not the dead soldiers.

Arthur's first kill had been a crisis, he'd turned to the side and puked. He'd been surprised in his fox hole and bayoneted an enemy in the night. The man had looked like Tommy, but much blonder. And Arthur's eyes hadn't left his face until dawn. He'd had to keep telling himself that it wasn't Tommy.

Like other soldiers, Arthur sometimes sees the men he's killed behind his eyelids. Unlike other soldiers, they don't always stay there. Arthur swears he can feel them near him. It's like constantly being dogged. The way Arthur had felt in small Heath when he'd first turned thirteen and it was like the other gangs had finally seen him as a combatant. Had followed him with their eyes.

There's an impression of something else though.

Something small and red, digging it's way from the grave.

Arthur gets trench foot, hell, they all do. And they are in constant pain. When Arthur sends letters to Tommy all he gets back is, 'I'm fine here brother' that Arthur can't bring himself to believe. John straight up doesn't respond and Arthur works himself into a tizzy about it, checks and rechecks registers. He'd have heard if otherwise.

The pain makes Arthur crazy, add to that the gasoline-lined watering cans they're forced to drink out of and he becomes sick. Feverish sick.

He jumbles out nonsense and even the other men he's serving with become worried. One presses a cold, wet chunk of dirt to his forehead. At some point he's wrapped in a threadbare blanket.

He thinks of the baby.

Well, it's not his baby. That's what Tommy had said. That he'd never made it and even if he had, it still is not his baby. The woman didn't want it and wouldn't have it. She'd only come because she didn't have the money.

John had had kids by then. Arthur wouldn't have minded was the thing.

He'd met Sheila at a party and she'd been lovely and they'd spent the night together even though Arthur had been too drunk to remember it all. Tommy had scolded him and told him he'd been a fool, that she was trying to get knocked up and why not by the Head of the Peaky Blinders?

Tommy must have been wrong though, or she wouldn't have come that day.

Arthur didn't just give her the money. He and Tommy went with her to the clinic. Arthur needed to make sure she would be okay for his own piece of mind. She'd turned back only once, something unsure and frightened on her face, but she hadn't looked at Arthur. It was Tommy she'd been looking at then.

Arthur hallucinates hell and he's stuck in it for a long while.

When the fever breaks the other men laugh awkwardly at him. He's holding a canteen in his arms, rocking it like a baby.

When it's time to come back from the war Arthur doesn't feel like he comes back the same as he left. Still, he isn't expecting the marked difference in Tommy.

He's hollow-eyed a bit, eyes red rimmed like there has been a constant flow of tears. He still smiles when he sees Arthur though, envelops him in a hug. It's the first time Arthur can relax since he left.

It's later that Arthur learns the Jurossi girl is dead, has been for a while. He wonders why Tommy didn't say so in his letters. He physically hurts for Tommy, but they don't talk about it. There's a lot of things they don't talk about.

John rolls in a week later than he was supposed to, drunk and jolly.

He wrangles Arthur with an arm around his shoulder and gives him a big wet kiss right on the mouth. It can't mean anything though because he laughs loudly afterwards and says,

"I've killed a hundred men Arthur, maybe more - and I was thinking of you all the while."

Arthur wipes, embarrassed, at his mouth before furrowing his brows and frowning.

"Well I missed you." Arthur says, a little hurt even though he knows it must be a joke.

"Not a matter of not having the courage now..." John mumbles unintelligibly, draping obnoxiously over Arthur and pawing at Arthur's clothing.

Tommy comes in but it's hardly the heartwarming reunion Arthur has been thinking of.

"Well I can finally say that Arthur has aged the most out of us all." Tommy says coldly, a bit cruel.

It's true. Arthur's face is withered and sunk from his suffering. He looks fifteen years older than Tommy, not three.

"How can you say that Tommy." John laughs loudly, joyously, "Look at his pretty face."

John grabs Arthur's chin as he says it and Arthur throws him off unhappily.

"Alright. I get it." He says petulantly, "Fin and Aunt Pol would love to see you so I'm going to go get them and you better have a good excuse as to why you're so late."

It's a relief. Things are as they should be. The men are home.

It doesn't feel like a relief.

Aunt Pol abdicates gracefully but Arthur finds there have been so many changes, he's no longer sure he recognizes the position he's left. Or maybe it's just him who doesn't fit anymore.

Flanders Blues. That's what they call them. Some - the weak - men get them. The strong men just get stronger, an overabundance of testosterone and violence. Like Tommy. Like John.

They're both unperturbed but Arthur can see it - they're unbalanced too. John is too giddy at times, and Tommy too desperate. Like maybe he needs to control the things around him to feel better.

Arthur tells himself he doesn't have the Flanders Blues.

He drinks, and drinks - but so do they all - and when he can't hold his liquor, when he falls against John and cries quietly into his collar, he feels something like despair.

John grounds him, hands at his back, at his shoulders, at his waist while Arthur murmurs terrible things about the war. Occasionally John whispers secrets back, every tale worse than Arthur's own. Each time Arthur hiccups and strokes John's face and tells him he's sorry.

One time - the last time, Arthur is so drunk he doesn't really remember, John draws him up into his lap, legs splayed open, and lets Arthur curl around him like a child. Rocks him, maybe, Arthur thinks. Motion of a sort.

Tommy had come in.

He'd bodily removed Arthur, bruises on Arthur's arms the next morning, said something lowly, rebuking, to John. Arthur hadn't been able to see straight through his blur of tears, able to comprehend even less.

"You're right Tommy." John's voice dry and choking with shame, "I-I shouldn't be...next time he has an attack of the Blues I'll send him to you."

"You're lucky he's drunk right now." Tommy bites.

Tommy is Arthur's number two, John runs the books because he's a genius with numbers and Tommy finds it too unexciting.

Maybe this is when it happens. The start of Arthur's downfall.

When Tommy finds him head in his hands, overwhelmed, leaning over the desk in his office one day.

"Let me help." Tommy says.

"You've already done so much." Tommy says.

"You deserve a rest." Tommy says, hand lingering on his shoulder.

A rest isn't permanent retirement. It's only a rest.

Except a lot of things happen when he rests. No, that's not it. A lot of things happen when Tommy is in control. Because if Arthur is not in control, it's obvious who is.

After the racehorse, he feels played for a fool.

Just what is Tommy trying to do?

It's a gamble that pays off and that mostly placates him. Then Arthur feels bad - surely Tommy has just been trying to wrest a bit of control, after the war? And maybe it's at Arthur's expense but where else can Tommy soothe his tortured soul?

He doesn't realize yet that Tommy's control is all consuming, is never satisfied. Tommy doesn't just want control of his own life, or of his job, or of Small Heath, or - to Arthur's shock when he goes after it - the Peaky Blinders. He wants control of Arthur himself. But, it takes a long time for Arthur to realize that.

Dreams of the war press in on him from all sides. Guts haphazardly thrown. The man who looked like Tommy in the pit and had taken seemingly forever to die. The glisten of viscera.

Arthur feels sick everyday. Feels like his head is floating above his body. Like those men have their eyes on him.

It's mostly what he thinks about and why he misses many things until it's too late to go back.

Like how much better Tommy is at running bets. How much rapport Tommy has build. How his bets always seem to pay off.

John stares at him blearily across the table in the Garrison.

"I'd follow you." John says, when Tommy's excused himself to talk to the cute barmaid, "Don't give a fuck what Tommy says I'll follow you."

At this point, it's already too late.

The Peaky Blinders are on Tommy's side going forth. Arthur can let go quietly or face the disgrace of Tommy's usurping him. Arthur's heart seizes in his chest.

Of course it isn't a choice.

Tommy is smarter, more powerful, more steady. He doesn't break down in churches and cry softly like Arthur. Arthur can't bear to make his brother into a traitor, hates even the implication of it.

"I asked him to take over." Arthur lies, "It's best..."

John's eyes soften.

"Still having trouble with that..."

Neither Tommy nor John are, Arthur feels his face heat.

"Arthur-" John continues, seriously. Leaning forward, more intimate.

"Not interrupting anything am I?" Tommy says pointedly, giddy.

Arthur has to blink it off. It's almost like his two brothers have switched roles.

"Of course not." John says.

"I'm about to turn in. " Tommy speaks over him, not hiding the fact who he thinks he's going to be turning in with, "Don't stay up too late Arthur."

John bristles at the instructions but says nothing.

When they're alone again neither of them brings any of it up. John sidles closer until they're next to each other, pours Arthur another drink.

Arthur watches Tommy's retreating back.

Him and John get sloshed.

Somehow, they make it home. John even tucks him into bed with another big, wet kiss. It's the only odd point of the night and they both laugh when Arthur tries to shove him off and John slips and a bit of his tongue gets in Arthur's mouth.

"Don't be gross." Arthur says, already so tired, room spinning.

"Sorry Arthur, sorry." John says, and let's his hand linger on Arthur's thigh, "Have sweet dreams."

Then John staggers, inebriated, to his own room.

It's later that Tommy comes in.

He wakes Arthur up, looks at him coldly.

"Did things take their course?" he asks, which makes no sense.

Arthur's still drunk, he tries to sit up but spills back.

Is Tommy talking about the Peaky Blinders?

"You tell me Tommy." he mutters.

Tommy lifts a corner of the blankets in disgust.

"That's what I was looking for." Tommy's coldness seeps out, warms up like liquid honey, "I knew he wouldn't have the guts to finish you off. He left you in quite a state."

Arthur looks down too and burns with humiliation when he sees he's a bit aroused.

He tries to slip the blanket back over him, and after a couple of clumsy attempts he manages it.

Shut up Tommy, Arthur wants to say. Instead he shoots him a halfhearted glare. Arthur's tired, struggles not to close his eyes against the swaying room.

Tommy slowly pulls the blanket right off of him. Arthur turns into himself in humiliation, grumbles at Tommy but doesn't catch the thin blanket before it falls to the floor.

"Stop it Tommy." he slurs.

"Stop it Tommy eh?" Tommy snickers back.

Arthur's on his side now, hands pressed over his lap.

He's embarrassed, or knows he should be - but his head it a bit fuzzy.

Tommy presses Arthur down the rest of the way, pins him on his stomach. Slides Arthur's pants down his hips.

And then suddenly Arthur is back in a foxhole, choking on mud, can't breathe, as the weight of blasts press him down.

He thrashes - or freezes - he isn't sure.

Tommy's voice is low in his air, just like that night with the man he'd killed who had looked like Tommy. Arthur could swear he had heard Tommy's voice then.

"Be good Arthur." He's saying.

It wasn't what he'd said then.

And there's - a body pressing against him. Not Tommy. How could it be Tommy? Tommy wasn't even there, isn't here.

But it's a man, heavy weight pinning the back of Arthur's thighs, as he...

Arthur moans into the sheets.

He's confused.

There's something - no, Arthur knows what - pressing against his ass. Naked skin on skin, sliding between, parting him just subtly. The head catches against the rim and Arthur comes at the contact, at the threat of it.

His head is spinning.

He doesn't feel well.

Something splashes wet and sticky across his backside.

Then the weight is gone but Arthur doesn't dare get up, doesn't dare look. Not until much much later. When there's no one there Arthur convinces himself there never was.

A ghost, maybe.

He's still drunk, swaying as he pushes himself up. He vomits on the sheets and it's an improvement from the mess left behind. He cleans himself up.

Tells himself there's nothing there so it didn't happen.

It's just a nightmare.

Arthur embraces the Flanders blues. Gives himself permission to think of dead men until they fill his mind, until they're all that's left.

And he does feel it.

It's a big enough thing on its own. It doesn't need a companion.

It's half melancholy, half violent outbursts.

He turns to John and...John turns away.

Maybe he's gotten sick of Arthur clinging to his collar. John - the last safe place.

It's all fine.

Arthur finds himself in a church and it's all fine.

Then, it isn't.

Then, there is Tommy who sits behind him and whispers in his ear and he's just.

Too close.

"John said I should have a word with you."

There is the faint outline of a smile behind his words.


End file.
